Ubuntu Wiki

Dev Week -- KDE/Kubuntu Junior Jobs/Papercuts -- seele -- Fri, Jan 29

UTC

(02:03:48 PM) maco: Hiya
(02:04:03 PM) maco: Ready for the Papercuts session?
(02:05:33 PM) maco: I'm going to guess that anyone wanting to sit on in this session is here by now, so...
(02:06:15 PM) maco: Hi, I'm Mackenzie, and I'm a MOTU.  I was asked this morning to cover this session for Celeste since she has school, so I'm going off of her notes
(02:06:54 PM) maco: This session is on KDE Junior Jobs and *buntu Papercuts (or paperkuts <g>)
(02:07:37 PM) maco: So first off, if you don't know yet, Kubuntu is a version of Ubuntu that uses KDE for its desktop environment instead of GNOME
(02:08:27 PM) maco: Most development happens upstream at KDE (kde.org) and then the Kubuntu developers package up each upstream release
(02:09:03 PM) maco: We try to stick closely to upstream, as giving back to the KDE is a good thing, and having to maintain a bunch of patches is a bad thing
(02:09:08 PM) maco: (or at least a not-fun thing)
(02:10:08 PM) maco: One thing we do because users seem to like it and it helps KDE get extra testing is package up pre-releases for KDE
(02:10:22 PM) maco: For example, KDE SC 4.4 RC2 is currently in one of the (many) Kubuntu PPAs
(02:10:31 PM) maco: (more info can always be found at kubuntu.org)
(02:11:17 PM) maco: A number of the Kubuntu developers also write patches which then get submitted upstream to KDE
(02:11:33 PM) maco: and then those new features end up in whatever the next final release is for KDE
(02:12:59 PM) maco: If you're interested in getting started contributing to Kubuntu and KDE, then bug fixes, small patches, papercuts, small improvements on existing features, and other junior jobs are all a GREAT way to get started
(02:14:30 PM) maco: For Karmic, the Hundred Papercuts project was started in Ubuntu, and Kubuntu had a share of them
(02:14:38 PM) maco: (see: https://launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts )
(02:15:27 PM) maco: The goal is to fix 100 papercuts per release, or in the case of Kubuntu (as it's a smaller team (can I add, "and KDE's already awesomer than GNOME"?)), 10 papercuts
(02:16:33 PM) maco: A papercut is defined as "a trivially fixable usability bug that the average user would encounter in default installation of Ubuntu or Kubuntu Desktop Edition"
(02:17:46 PM) maco: Ok well, that's the surface goal
(02:18:24 PM) maco: The REAL goal is to fix all those little annoyances that pile up until the desktop becomes unusable or at least a pain in the rear
(02:19:00 PM) maco: For example, a task may require that you click 10 times among 3 different windows, and well, if you only have to do that once every few months, that's not a big deal
(02:19:10 PM) maco: but if you have to do that 50 times per day...
(02:19:18 PM) maco: It gets old fast ;)
(02:19:53 PM) maco: Anyway, Kubuntu tries to deal with 10 paperkuts per release, and we try to get the patches for these paperkuts accepted in upstream KDE as well
(02:20:07 PM) maco: Because, again, maintaining patches is much less fun than writing them
(02:21:25 PM) maco: Some of the past Kubuntu paperkuts were cases where text was a little too technical for an end-user and had to be changed, or in the Kickoff menu the user's icon was showing next to the search box instead of the user's name
(02:22:55 PM) maco: Here are a list of Kubuntu's papercuts from Karmic & Lucid: https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bugs?field.searchtext=kubuntu&orderby=-importance&search=Search&field.status%3Alist=NEW&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITH_RESPONSE&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITHOUT_RESPONSE&field.status%3Alist=CONFIRMED&field.status%3Alist=TRIAGED&field.status%3Alist=INPROGRESS&field.status%3Alist=FIXCOMMITTED&field
(02:22:55 PM) maco: .status%3Alist=FIXRELEASED&assignee_option=any&field.assignee=&field.bug_reporter=&field.bug_supervisor=&field.bug_commenter=&field.subscriber=&field.omit_dupes.used=&field.omit_dupes=on&field.has_patch.used=&field.has_cve.used=&field.affects_me.used=&field.tag=&field.tags_combinator=ANY
(02:23:54 PM) maco: (and apparently not all of the kubuntu ones were tagged...)
(02:25:36 PM) maco: I suspect Celeste had links already arranged for seeing past and present Kubuntu papercuts, but I don't have them, so...
(02:26:11 PM) maco: here's some more that say kde but dont say kubuntu: https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bugs?field.searchtext=kde&orderby=-importance&search=Search&field.status%3Alist=NEW&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITH_RESPONSE&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITHOUT_RESPONSE&field.status%3Alist=CONFIRMED&field.status%3Alist=TRIAGED&field.status%3Alist=INPROGRESS&field.status%3Alist=FIXCOMMITTED&field
(02:26:11 PM) maco: .status%3Alist=FIXRELEASED&assignee_option=any&field.assignee=&field.bug_reporter=&field.bug_supervisor=&field.bug_commenter=&field.subscriber=&field.omit_dupes.used=&field.omit_dupes=on&field.has_patch.used=&field.has_cve.used=&field.affects_me.used=&field.tag=&field.tags_combinator=ANY
(02:26:21 PM) maco: Anyway, moving on...
(02:26:32 PM) maco: If you think you've found a papercut, submit it as a bug to Launchpad
(02:27:00 PM) maco: Mark it as  bug both against the "hundredpapercuts" project and the specific package in Kubuntu if you know it
(02:28:42 PM) maco: If you would like to fix one of those papercuts you see up there but you need some help ^  join #kubuntu-devel and
(02:28:49 PM) maco: er... and we'll help you out
(02:29:32 PM) maco: OK, so that's papercuts.  I mentioned something called "Junior Jobs" at the start too
(02:30:12 PM) maco: Maybe you've seen bugs tagged "bitesize" in Launchpad, or you might know about Daniel Holbach's Harvest project to show low-hanging fruit for new developers
(02:30:21 PM) maco: Junior Jobs are KDE's version of that same idea
(02:30:58 PM) maco: And I'm being told in -chat that I should point out that "job" is like "volunteer job" in case you're thinking you can get money for it. Because you won't.
(02:32:22 PM) maco: QUESTION: link for the harvest project? (i am google challenged at the moment)
(02:32:32 PM) maco: Harvest can be found at http://daniel.holba.ch/harvest
(02:32:53 PM) maco: There are plans to make it prettier
(02:34:29 PM) maco: By the way, my computer is currently telling me that opening the "sourcepackage list" page on Harvest while having ~100 other tabs open in Firefox is an idea to which it is opposed. You've been warned.
(02:35:33 PM) maco: OK, so...Junior Jobs.  The KDE techbase (one of the KDE wikis) page for Junior Jobs is here: http://techbase.kde.org/Contribute/Junior_Jobs
(02:36:27 PM) maco: As you can see, KDE separates its Junior Jobs by sub-project, so you can see just KMail or just Kopete or whatever's available jobs
(02:37:46 PM) maco: Or you can see all of the KDE Junior Jobs here: https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?keywords=junior-jobs&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&cmdtype=doit
(02:38:07 PM) maco: Earlier this question came up and I held it til reaching the Junior Jobs part...
(02:38:21 PM) maco: QUESTION: some bugs marked as Junior Jobs don't sound easy, like implementing a new KIO slave, how come they are marked as Junior Job?
(02:39:42 PM) maco: Now, I don't have a lot of involvement with upstream KDE like Celeste does, so she'd have a better answer than I do, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a bit of mentorship in there somewhere
(02:40:23 PM) maco: I also don't think Junior Jobs are supposed to be aimed at "I've never written code before" but rather "I can code...kind of...but I've never worked on such a big project before"
(02:40:46 PM) maco: And a lot of the Papercuts are quite a bit more advanced than "I've never written code before" too, so... keep that in mind
(02:42:36 PM) mode (+o maco ) by ChanServ
(02:42:50 PM) maco: Nightrose: do you have a better answer to "some bugs marked as Junior Jobs don't sound easy, like implementing a new KIO slave, how come they are marked as Junior Job?"
(02:43:22 PM) mode (+v Nightrose ) by ChanServ
(02:43:27 PM) maco: Oh yeah, let me introduce Nightrose, aka Lydia
(02:43:37 PM) maco: She's the Amarok lead, I believe
(02:44:20 PM) Nightrose: jep :)
(02:44:32 PM) Nightrose: so people said some of the junior jobs are hard
(02:44:39 PM) Nightrose: there are two reasons for this:
(02:45:00 PM) Nightrose: 1) the person who marked it as a junior job didn't know the program very well and didn't know how hard it actually is
(02:45:27 PM) Nightrose: 2) the person who marked it is having a hard time judging how hard a particular task is
(02:45:39 PM) Nightrose: neither is really nice but it happens
(02:45:59 PM) Nightrose: we try to keep them at junior level as wel as we can of course :)
(02:46:01 PM) maco: Nightrose: can they be un-marked as JJs?
(02:46:19 PM) Nightrose: yes of course - tell me or other people in #kde-bugs
(02:46:30 PM) maco: Great! Thank you :)
(02:46:36 PM) Nightrose: you're welcome :)
(02:47:03 PM) maco: Feel free to thwap me if I say anything wrong/stupid between now and 15 minutes :)
(02:48:47 PM) maco: <Quintasan> maco, Nightrose: is anyone in particular responsible for reporting PaperKuts to KDE? I mean something like Bug #510219, marked as tiriaged but not linked to any of KDE bugs, it's safe for me to report that upstream and link it to LP?
(02:48:56 PM) maco: Go right ahead :)
(02:49:25 PM) maco: QUESTION: If I want to patch KDE progressbar animation smoothness, where would I start? The oxygen theme? (I've patched it locally before :) )
(02:49:54 PM) maco: Neither Nightrose nor I know know to answer this one, so I guess now's the time to note that on this IRC server there is #kde-devel, and they would likely have an answer
(02:51:14 PM) maco: And Mamarok is pointing out that Nightrose is release manager, not lead. oops!
(02:51:33 PM) maco: Anyway, time to start wrapping up
(02:52:10 PM) maco: So the benefits to participating in Junior Jobs or Papercuts are that you get a chance to test out your skills in a *real* project, not those silly things the teachers make you write at school
(02:52:36 PM) maco: You get a chance to gain some rapport with the rest of the project so that as your skillset grows, they know and trust you
(02:52:52 PM) maco: You end up witha more usable desktop, which is always great
(02:53:41 PM) maco: programming, why hasn't it caught with enough strength? Do women like C++?
(02:53:44 PM) maco: bah
(02:53:54 PM) maco: QUESTION: if Qt (C++) is supposedly hundreds of times better than GTK+ (C) for GUI programming, why hasn't it caught with enough strength? Do women like C++?
(02:54:21 PM) maco: Honestly, the reason I know how to do C/GTK+ programming and not C++/Qt is that my school taught C, not C++
(02:54:28 PM) maco: and I haven't gotten around to learning C++
(02:55:00 PM) maco: In either case, PyGTK and PyQt (and PyKDE) exist, so even so, learning C/C++ is not a requirement to participation
(02:55:23 PM) maco: And I'm just not going to answer that women...C++ part.  People use what they like, regardless of gender.
(02:55:27 PM) Nightrose: there are also bindings for scripting languages
(02:55:37 PM) Nightrose: so you can do cool stuff in ruby or java script
(02:56:58 PM) maco: This does bring up the point that on top of learning just Python or C++, there are libraries you need to learn to work in the KDE world, so Junior Jobs / Papercuts give you a chance to build on top of your base programming knowledge if you just know Python or C++
(02:57:14 PM) maco: Any other quick questions in the 3 minutes we have left?
(02:58:26 PM) maco: QUESTION: Does everybody know that KDE+Kubuntu will rule the world?
(02:58:35 PM) maco: Yes, but whether they're willing to admit it is another thing entirely
(02:59:45 PM) maco: <Mamarok> also, Qt/C++ allows to do shorter code, the Qt framework is very powerful   <-- good point. you'll find you can do a lot of painful things very easily as you get into KDE programming
(03:00:32 PM) maco: OK, time's up here. Hope everyone's all excited to get cracking on these bugs
(03:00:33 PM) maco: Bye!
(03:00:56 PM) Nightrose: thanks everyone for coming and maco for rocking :)
(03:01:19 PM) maco: Thanks for your help, Lydia